


Beautiful

by jotc



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Body Image, Insecurity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 20:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jotc/pseuds/jotc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>de-anon from avengers kinkmeme: Tony showers Steve with compliments, calls him handsome, beautiful, admires his stamina, his muscles, his endurance in bed. Steve wonders if Tony sees beyond the Serum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> de-anon from avengers kinkmeme: Tony showers Steve with compliments, calls him handsome, beautiful, admires his stamina, his muscles, his endurance in bed. Steve wonders if Tony sees beyond the Serum. (Paraphrased, since the original prompt has been deleted and I don't recall the exact wording.)

Tony showers him with compliments, calls him handsome, beautiful, admires his stamina, his muscles, his endurance in bed. It's nonstop, in public and in private.

Steve thinks he ought to love it, but he doesn't. Instead he keeps remembering the guy he used to be, the one everyone overlooked. He keeps wondering if Tony, with his money and his pricey suits and his insistence on style, would ever have looked twice at the short, skinny asthmatic guy who always needed a buddy to look after him and never wanted to admit it.

So when he finds out that Tony has the original footage of his transformation under the Vita-Ray, he asks to see it. Really what he wants is to watch Tony seeing it, see if he spares a glance for the skinny kid, or if he saves his gaze for Captain America only.

"Are you sure," Tony asks, not joking for once.

Steve blinks.

"I mean, it doesn’t end well."

It doesn't, actually. It ends with Dr. Erskine's death.

"I don't want to see him get shot," Steve says slowly. "But I'd really like to see the rest of it."

Tony's face clears. "That's okay. I know when to stop the reel."

So Tony sets up a genuine 1940's movie reel, not the faux-retro crap people expect him to like, but the real deal with the original cellophane, and they watch.

Steve has actually never seen himself this way. His mother never had money for photographs. They cost more in his time, but even the cheap disposable Polaroids of today probably would have been beyond their slender means. He's seen publicity photos, but it's a strange, strange sensation to see his small and determined younger self walk into a crowded lab and be treated half as the star of the show and half as an object to be experimented on. Someone who didn't know any better would say that the guy on the reel is just a kid, but Steve knows he wasn't a kid, even then. His parents' deaths are written in the set of his chin.

He glances over at Tony, who is staring fixedly at celluloid-Steve. His eyes are wide, he's leaning forward, his hands are curled and tense.

On screen, a snarky comment floats down from the gallery. "Jesus, somebody get the kid a sandwich,"

"Asshole," Tony mutters.

Steve huffs softly in laughter. That comment stung at the time, though it wasn't actually especially nasty by the standards of the day. But the hurt has faded over the years to the point where it almost triggers nostalgia.

"He was," Tony says stubbornly. "Though you do look like you need a sandwich."

"Nah," he said easily. "The army fed me pretty regularly, even if I don't look it."

Tony spared him one quick, concerned glance, as if guessing that meals prior to enlisting hadn't always been quite so regular. Then he goes back to staring at the screen.

When celluloid-Steve starts to scream, Steve winces. He still remembers how it had hurt, how he'd been torn apart from the inside and reformed, and had felt every bit of it. Fortunately, the serum itself had started to enhance his ability to tolerate pain before the transformation was even complete.

Uncomfortable at listening to celluloid-Steve scream himself hoarse, Steve turns his attention to Tony. He looks like he's stopped breathing. His hands are fully clenched. When people try to stop midway, and celluloid-Steve insists, "I can do this!" Tony huffs in approval and takes a quick breath. 

He goes rigid again during the final moments of screaming, but relaxes as soon as the screaming stops. Smiles, takes a deep breath, leans back. Looks relieved.

When the coffin-like chamber is cracked open to reveal Steve Version 2.0, Tony looks over at Steve, grins with infectious cheer, and says, "Michelangelo revealed!"

Steve can't help but smile back. Tony lets the reel play for a few more seconds, then turns it off.

Steve says, "You looked like you weren't sure how it was going to end there."

Tony, wonder of wonders, looks embarrassed. Tony never looks embarrassed, no matter how much he ought to.

"Yeah, I know it's dumb, but I always get sucked in. It's like watching a movie more than once--you know what will happen, but you still have to watch just to make sure it still happens the same way. Even though this is actual history, it still gets me."

"How often have you watched this thing?" Steve asks, bemused.

"Ah, well, a few, um, it's just... you're so... perfect, you know? I liked this reel even before I met you, 'cause you have attitude, but now that we're together... You can be kind of intimidating sometimes, you know? Well, actually you don't, but that just makes it worse, 'cause you're all that and modest too. I don't think I could even be with you if I didn't know you'd been on the other side."

Well, that puts a different light on Tony's nonstop stream of excessive comments on his body. And isn't it just like Tony to push headfirst into anything that scares him? Tony will always be the kind to jump headfirst into cold water, to rip off the Band-Aid all at once, to mouth off to the bullies so he can fight the fight on his own terms.

"It intimidates me too sometimes," Steve says in a low voice. "I worry that no one sees me. That little kid from Brooklyn, that's the real me."

That cues a shocked look on Tony's face, and then Steve has an armful of Tony, kissing him vigorously and muttering reassurances in his ear. Steve kisses back enthusiastically, but then breaks off, puts his hand over the arc reactor.

Tony flinches, freezes, and Steve wonders later if it's just self-consciousness or if it's something more. But he doesn't pull his hand back; he's afraid of what Tony will read into it if he does.

"I know you see me, the hotheaded stubborn little kid, the guy who's just Steve, the person who's both less and more than the outfit. I want you to know that I see you too. Maybe not all of you, not yet, 'cause you're a hard guy to figure out sometimes. 

"But I do see you. The guy who's braver than he knows, the guy who's ashamed that it took him so long to try to untangle world politics and understand his role in it, the genius kid who lost his dad too soon and who had it rougher than he likes people to notice.

"I know you're proud of the arc reactor, Tony, but it's not the only thing about you that is beautiful."

Steve has wanted to say that for a long time, but Tony hasn't made it easy. For someone who shows off nonstop, the guy has a tough time taking sincere compliments gracefully.

But this time it seems to sink in. Maybe Tony doesn't trust it yet, but at least he hears it. He looks away, looks back for just an instant, looks away again, finally nods just a little. And then Steve had an armful of Tony again. And if Tony is kissing him a little too frantically, moving too fast and is a little too eager to turn Steve's attention to what Tony is doing to him rather than their conversation, Steve doesn't mind. He knows things take time.

They're neither of them perfect, but Steve is, among other things, an artist. He knows quite well that the most perfect is not necessarily the most beautiful.


End file.
